


It's All About You

by writershapeholeonthedoor



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: Comfort/Angst, F/F, Feelings, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Love, Love Confessions, Romance, Romantic Fluff, They love each other, root is mad, shaw is soft
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-25
Updated: 2019-07-25
Packaged: 2020-07-19 09:20:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19971688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writershapeholeonthedoor/pseuds/writershapeholeonthedoor
Summary: Shaw has to let a number die to save Root.





	It's All About You

**Author's Note:**

> So, I'm really proud of this work. This is, by far, my favorite until now. Go follow me on tumblr, @imagineheadcanonsarea, and talk to me. You can message me, send me an ask, send me prompts or just look my other stuff.  
> Also, english is not my first language, so please let me know if there's something wrong!

Sameen Shaw could count in the fingers of one hand the times she saw Root mad about something since they met. Like, really mad about something. It was four times, and one of them was with Fusco when he hid her computer. In all of these four times, it was Shaw’s job to help calm her down, because she was crazy enough in her normal state, let alone angry with something.

So Shaw wasn’t really ready to be in the end of her glares or to see her storming in and out of the room’s in their small apartment like she was trying to vent out some of her frustration with her heavy steps. Shaw watched her from the kitchen counter, slowly drinking her water, trying to stay out of her way until she was calm enough to realize there was no reason for her to be mad. Especially at Shaw.

Shaw didn’t moved while Root took a shower, neither she moved when the hacker walked back to the living room with a laptop under her arm and a blanket in the other. She set in the couch, made herself confortable, put the blanket in her legs and placed the laptop in her thighs, not even once looking at Shaw’s direction.

The shorter woman wanted to point out that that was the exact reason she said it wasn’t a good idea to live togheter (because when you get mad at each other, there’s no place to go). Root had answered her with “I could never be mad at you, sweetie” and moved in the next day. _Well, you’re mad right now_ , Shaw wanted to tell her. Instead, she took a deep breath and walked to the bedroom. If Root wanted space, she was going to give it to her.

* * *

_“Where are you?”_

_“Hello to you too, Finch. How are you feeling, my buddy?” Fusco mocked throught the earpiece._

_Shaw almost allowed a sneer herself. “I’m watching my number.”_

_“Work.” Fusco answered finally._

_“Shaw, you need to get to Reese and Root, now. Fusco, try to find a way to get out...”_

_Shaw was already running, picking up the phone in her pocket, ignoring the woman sitting in the bench and the weird looking guy approaching her from behind. Like she expected, there was an adress between her texts. She just had to find a car._

_XxXxX_

_“Finch, give me a location.” Shaw demanded, jumping out of the jeep she had stolen, already pulling out her gun and pulling the safety lock off._

_“Northwest.” She tried not to pay attention in his scared tone. “There’s a fire stair that will take you to the second floor.”_

_“I’m on my way!” Fusco shot in a hurry. They could hear he was almost without air, clearly running._

_Shaw had just took the first step in the stair when the shots started. “Root, where are you?” She started to climb faster._

_“Hi, sweetie! You decided to join the party?” She could hear rustling in Root's voice and a cold shiver ran throught Shaw’s spine._

_“I’m taking the number out.” Reese informed between shots._

_There was a quick pause in the loud noise, before the gunfire started again. “I will take the men to the other side.”_

_“Stay where you are, Root, I’m coming.” Shaw finally reached the window, jumped inside and looked to her left. “Where are you?” She growled._

_“Go with Reese, he has the number.” The hacker demanded._

_“I’m coming down to the second floor.” Reese said._

_Shaw looked to her right where she could see the end of the stairs that came from the last floor in the abandoned shed. Root was going to the other direction then. The former marine started to ran to the left. She passed a few windows and doors on her way and suddenly the gun shots started to sound right in front of her. Behind her was silence._

_“Got them on my trail, Reese. Go!”_

_The persian forced her legs to work faster. There was a burning in her thighs and lower back, her lungs were starting to have some problems, but she kept running like her life depended on it – it kind of did. Left. Right. Right. Right. Left. Why did that building was made like a maze?_

_“There’s more of them coming from the first floor!” Reese screamed and the shots restarted from somewhere behind her._

_And then, suddenly, the gunfire in front of her stoped. “I’m out of bullets.” Root’s voice wasn’t shaken by it, even if Shaw’s heart skipped a beat in her chest._

_“Root, I’m getting there. Find somewhere to hide.” Shaw took another turn to right and finally faced the first man. He was running too and they almost bumped in each other, but she used her reflex to shot him – the man didn’t even moved a finger before he fell into the cold floor._

_“Shaw, Reese has our number!”_

_Shaw wanted to scream at that, but she only groaned almost in pain, turning left again._

_“Guys, I’m five blocks away!” Fusco screamed in her ear._

_“I can’t go to the first floor, they locked the stair!” Reese was starting to sound tired. “I will try the fire stair in second floor and... shit!”_

_“Mr. Reese?” Harold sounded really scared. Shaw took another turn to the left._

_“Run!” It was Reese again. “I have four of them with me, the number is alone! He’s running to the stairs.”_

_There was too much happening in her head. With a growl, Shaw took her earpiece off, throwing it somewhere behind her while making another turn. She stoped when realized she had just got in the bottom of the stairs. Turning her body around, she tried to hear anything else. There was shots in the floor under her, footsteps everywhere, screams and... there, a taser. Shaw took off again, but only had to give a couple of stpe until she saw a trail of fallen men. She knew that look, they had been tased._

_With a proud smile, she looked up and finally saw Root. She had three men around her, looking like they could get a bull on the ground. The hacker tried to use her taser again, but it was unloaded and she threw it at the nearest man’s face, quickly kicking his guts afterwards. Before Shaw could do anything, Root had taken two of the mans down, but the third one was holding a gun._

_“Guess I have a better hand, sweetie.” He had a mocking voice while raising his hand to point the gun at Root._

_“Help!” Shaw turned around to the scream. A man – she assumed it was the number since he was the only one that wasn’t using a black suit – was standing right in front of the stairs, his back turned to her, hands raised in a deffensive way, and he was shaking like crazy. In front of him was a man as big as the one in front of Root, also holding a gun, finger in the trigger._

_Shaw knew she only had one shot. She couldn’t shot in diffent directions at the same time – if only she had two guns like Root insisted she had. “Shaw!” She didn’t knew who screamed it, her ears felt like she was under water, thoughts running a thousand miles per hour but still not fast enough. “The number!”_

_She turned around in one fluid move. The shots sounded exactly at the same time and, for a second, it was just one big loud noise. The man in front of Root fell, a hole in his head. Without blinking, Shaw turned around and shot the other man. His body fell on top of the body of their number – who now had a bullet hole in his chest. It all happened like it was in slow motion, the shots, the falls, the blood flowing from the dead bodies. It probably took about four or five seconds to end, but for Shaw it could have been hours._

_Shaw took deep breaths and slowly things started to make sense again. There was noises – shots outside –, someone was talking to her, men groaning in pain in the floor, a cellphone ringing. She blinked and things were back to normal speed, the gun in her hands felt heavy, but she managed to turn her arm to shot a man in his knees when he tried to run the stairs at them._

_“Sam, we have to go!” Root’s hand were pulling her strongly, closed around her biceps in a iron grip, her voice was filled with something that Shaw couldn’t put her finger on. “Shaw!” The hacker called her again and pulled her again. “Harold is telling us there’s more cars coming this way, we have to leave.”_

_Finally Shaw started to move. She quickly reached for a hid pocket inside her jacket and took another magazine filled with bullets out, giving it to Root. “Stay behind me.”_

_“Don’t tell me what to do.” That was the last thing Root told her before storming out like a uncontrolled train._

* * *

Shaw took a slow shower, whasing her skin carefully to remove all the dry blood. She also washed her hair, folded all the towels twice, fixed the crooked mirror and dryed her hair, before leaving the small bathroom. The bedroom was still empty, not that she thought Root had give up already, so she took her time to change, putting some large sweat pants and a hoodie. When she was done, Shaw realized how hungry she was. Her cooking skills sucked and there was no way she was going to ask Root to make her delicious spaghetti and be alive to actually eat it.

She could walk the two blocks to the pizza place and grab something for dinner, but that meant leaving and she was scared she would find an empty apartment when she got back. So instead Shaw picked up her phone and walked out of the bedroom. Root was still in the same position, with the same grimace, typing furiously in her laptop.

“I’m going to order pizza. Do you want something else or can I order pepperoni?” Shaw tried to be as gentle as she could and her voice was almost a whisper. Root didn’t looked up, she didn’t even acknowledge the fact that the younger woman had said anything – or that she was standing right in front of her - , she just kept doing whatever she was doing. Shaw resisted the urge to throw the computer in the closest wall. “Olives?”

Shaw managed to stay two whole minutes waiting for an answer, but, when Root still didn’t said a thing, she sighed and turned around to grab the number in the fridge. She give two steps when the hacker’s voice filled the unconfortable silence. “I’m not hungry.” It didn’t sound like Root at all. Her voice was always cheerful, happy, excited. Always with the tone that made clear she knew something no one else did and that she found it hilarious, but in that moment her voice held no emotions.

She sounded just like Shaw and it scared the shit out of the former marine. “You only had breakfast.” It was almost 8pm now, Shaw checked her watch.

Root was back to being silent. Shaw waited a couple of seconds, but the woman was ignoring her again, so she sighed one more time while dialing the pizza place. They would take 20 minutes to deliver, so the persian had to keep herself busy for that time. She walked back to their badroom, took the supplies out of the wardrobe in the left corner, and set in bed to clean her gun. To be honest, she wished she could watch some silly TV show or listen to some random music, but they only had one small TV – that was in the living room – and one stereo – also in the living room – so she would have to do it sorrounded with silence.

20 minutes later, there was a knock in the door and Shaw jumped to action, glad to have something else to do and get distracted. While cleaning her gun, all she could think was what happened that day and Root’s completly desapproving look, it was good to have something else to think.

“Pizza’s here.” Shaw whispered the obvious, waving the pizza’s box around like she did when she wanted Bear’s attention. Again, Root didn’t look up. The former marine almost groaned in frustration – she had a very very very limited patience.

Shaw walked to the kitchen, opened the top cabinet to grab a plate and placed two pizza’s slices on it. She went back to the living room, put the plate in the improvised coffee table – it was actually a box – before going back to the kitchen. Eating in the living room was not an option, because Root would either kill her or she would kill herself in frustration. If Root was waiting for her to apologize, she would be waiting for very long time.

Shaw ate four slices before she even realized and suddenly she had nothing else to do again. Looking at her watch again – almost 9pm – she decided it was an acceptable time to go to bed, especially if she couldn’t watch TV or breathe without fear being shot. She got up and glanced to the living room. Root hadn’t eat the pizza. Shaw rolled her eyes, put the last two slices in the fridge and then walked back to the bedroom. She was about to lie down when she realized that Root’s pillow was gone.

The hacker took the blanket with her because she was going to sleep in the couch.

It was going too far and Shaw was not going to allow it.

She marched back in six angry steps, stoping right behind the couch and crossed her arms. Root still didn’t looked at her. “Come on.” Nothing. “Root, I’m not joking.” Nothing. “You’re either getting up and going to bed, or you’re going to say what’s in your mind, because this is ridiculous.” Short patience, bad temper, Shaw sounded like a bomb about to explode and yet Root didn’t moved an inch to acknowledge her presense. “Root.” Shaw was almost growling now.

“You let him die.” Root finally spoke, fingers pausing just above the keys in her laptop. Her fingers twitched, closing and opening a couple of times.

 _No shit, Sherlock_ , Shaw almost rolled her eyes. “I’m aware of that. Believe me, Harold wants to talk to me about it first thing in the morning and I’m sure I’m going to break his nose.”

Root’s hands closed in thight fists and her breath became heavier. “You could have saved him.”

“Yes, I could have.” There was no point trying to deny the obvious true. She could have. Shaw knew she had two options – she knew it now and she knew it then. “I also could have stayed behind and stoped the hired killer in the park.” Harold had informed her the second her earpiece was back on, but he didn’t had to, Shaw had heard the scream while she was breaking the jeep’s window.

“Why didn’t you?” The hacker sounded so angry, so mad, so in the edge of being completly furious that Shaw decided to take a second to chose her words.

“Why do you think I did it?” Her voice was low, almost too quiet for any of them to hear.

But Root did, and suddenly the rage exploded and she jumped from the couch to face Shaw. Her eyes had a burning fire behind them and Shaw felt her arms starts to shiver. “Whatever reason you had, you shouldn’t have done it!” She spilled out. “You had the chance to save the number, both of them actually, but you didn’t. They’re both dead now.”

Shaw took a deep breath – she barely realized it was shaken a little bit – and let her arms fall by her sides like dead weight. “Root...”

“No, Shaw! That’s our job, that’s what we do! Did you all of sudden forgot that?” Root was signing frantically with her arms, eyes wide and speaking loudly as the words left. “What the hell were you thinking?!”

“I was thinking about you!” Shaw also raised her voice. The apartment was too small around them, the words hit the walls and reached her ears again, making her wince. Realizing she needed to calm down, she took another deep breath and shook her head. “Harold called me, us, he called Fusco and I in our earpieces. He said we should get to you and Reese imediatly.”

“You had a number.” Root tried to interrupt, but Shaw raised one hand to make her stop.

“Imediatly, Root. So I did. And there was only one of me against two armed guys pointing their guns to different directions.”

Root crossed her arms. Her body deflated like an drilled baloon, even if the fire in her eyes were still there. “You should have saved him.”

“Yes, I should have.” Shaw agreeded with a sneer. “Because that’s my job, so yes, I should have shot in the different direction, but I couldn’t do it.”

“Why?”

“Because if I did, that would mean you would be in his place.” The shorter woman felt a tightness in her chest that made it harder to breath for a second. The image had flashed in her mind a thousand times since the first time she hear Harold talking to her that day – Root, fatally shot, laying in the floor somewhere. It was too much for her. “Do you understand that, Root? Do you understand that, if I had saved that guy, whoever he was, you would be dead now?” Shaw felt more than heard the crack in her voice in the last words, but she decided to ignore it.

The hacker rolled her eyes in annoyance. “You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do know that.” Shaw clenched her jaws. “Because I saw a man pointing a gun to your head when you didn’t had one to shot him first. So, unless you have something about a superpower you want to tell me, you can’t say you wouldn’t be dead.”

Root stayed in silence for a while, looking at Shaw like she couldn’t reconize her at all. In the end, she let a deep breath out and looked at her bare feet. “It dosen’t matter.”

“It dosen’t _matter_?” The words tasted like poison in the ex marine’s mouth and she spit them like they were a plague.

The older woman shrugged. “The numbers are relevant, that’s our job. The Machine finds relevant numbers and it’s our mission to protect or eliminate them. That’s what we do. That’s...”

“I don’t care.” Shaw’s voice was filled with a sorrow that made Root finally meet her eyes. The shorter woman had both hand in her waist, her jaw was clenched so tightly that Root was scared she might broke her teeths and her whole body was tense. But her eyes... her eyes held a delicacy that made the hacker’s breath get stuck in her throat.

“The number...” Root tried, just to be stoped by a scoff.

“Those numbers might be relevant for the Machine, to Harold, to you, to everyone else, but they don’t mean a thing to me. Not when you’re in the picture. So you can stay mad at me for as long as you want, but I’m not going to apologize for doing the right thing.” Shaw held a conviction that stoped anything Root might want to say. “I know I don’t say that enough, Root, that’s just who I’m, but I _do_ love you.” Root wanted to point out that it was only the second time she ever said that, but she bite her tongue to stop herself. “So you, or Harold, or Reese, or the Machine can’t blame me for choosing you over someone I don’t even know. I care about the numbers like I care about the cars we stole everyday, but I will do my job the best I can, as long as it dosen’t mean getting _your_ life in the line.”

“Sameen...”

“Can you understand that, Root?” The former marine was almost begging for her to understand, because she had just opened her heart like never before and it was scary enough. “Can you understand that I would do that again, that I will do that again if it ever comes to it?”

Root swallowed hard, feeling hot tears burning the back of her eyes. She mimic Shaw’s position with hands on her hips and sniffed loudly. “Yes.” Her coffee-colored eyes blurred with tears, but she held them back. “Because I would do the same.”

Shaw nodded, letting her shoulders drop with a relieved sigh, and took one step closer. She stoped, looked to the ground, looked back at Root, back to the ground, before scratching the back of her neck – she suddenly reminded she was not good with that kind of stuff. “I’m sorry your number is dead.” She murmured.

The hacker finally allowed the smallest grin to reach her lips. “You said you weren’t going to apologize.”

“I’m not.” Shaw shrugged. “I just said I’m sorry you lost one number, not that I’m sorry I didn’t saved him.”

Root took a very needed breath and frown. “It’s just... it’s very important to me.”

“I know.” The shorter woman whispered back. “It’s important for me too, but not as much as you’re.”

Root smiled fully at that, delighted to hear her girlfriend’s words. “I love you too, Sam.”

Shaw also smiled, before scoffing at herself and rolling her eyes. “Can we go to bed now?”

“Actually...” Root bent over to grab the pizza plate. “I didn’t had dinner yet... Unless you have something else I could eat to offer me.” She swung her eyebrows suggestively.

“Fine.” Shaw shrugged, turned on her heels and started to walk back to the bedroom. “You will sleep in the couch.”

“No, wait, Sam! I thought you loved me!”


End file.
